The evolution of a teacher

I have been teaching English as a Second Language for a while now, and I've noticed that throughout this time, I have changed a lot of my teaching styles.

When I first started teaching, I thought that I would teach things, then the students would repeat. Repeating many times would drive them to remember things. That turned out to be a disaster because they would remember them, but didn't know how to use them.

Then, I would try games and crap like that to make things enjoyable for the students. After a while, I (and the students) would even forget what the heck the game or activity was about (Was it about a verb tense? A grammatical point? Vocabulary?).

Oh, and then their is pair-work. My goodness, when I was in Japan, the JTE always loved pair work! But...problems can happen with pair work (students maybe hate each other, maybe you have two students who are overly quiet, so they wouldn' say anything. Or they were too noisy, so they would never focus on the topic, etc.)

Then, I was a grammar nut! Always focusing on grammar and immediately stopping the student in mid-sentence when they made a mistake. That could be detrimental to the student because if I always stop them in mid sentence, they would lose confidence and feel depressed, etc.

Oh, and how can I forget this...in Japan, it felt like the talk time was 80/20! (80% of the time, I was talking. 20% of the time, the student was talking) All I gotta say is...OUCH!!

I've learned so much from my experiences as a teacher. Nowadays, I never focus on any one topic or style I mentioned above. I don't do constant repetition, because that would be boring, but I would quiz them about important points, using different situations so they could use those points in more than one situation. I make sure the games have a purpose. I still do the pair work stuff, but instead of letting the students go and converse freely, I walk around the room, listening to conversations, correcting if needed (especially being careful that some of their mistakes don't 'fossilize' and become part of their permanent thought process). I teach grammar in all possible ways (writing, showing the grammar rules, having them analyze the rules like a mathematical formula, etc.) AND...try really hard to make sure that the talk time is 20/80 (20% me, 80% them) - sometimes that is a hard one to do!! Usually it is 45/55...

Everyday I learn my craft, and I also am constantly evolving as a teacher. I think that is what makes us better teachers. It is this that makes me feel very happy that I chose this profession.